SFB Campaign Nov 08

[cheethorne]

To recap the first four turns of the game:
* Players expanded (big surprise).
* Jason and John declared a Formal Alliance
* John and Chris fought an early battle that saw two of John's police ships getting easily destroyed by a real fleet controlled by Chris.
* On turn 4, real fireworks occurred between John and Chris as two large fleets engaged.

John had a assault fleet led by the massive B10 battleship, a bombardment fleet featuring several bombardment cruisers, and a second assault fleet with four commando cruisers. Chris has three assault fleets, one led by a powerful CVA dreadnought and two heavy cruiser led fleets.

Before the battles even began, Chris's legendary admiral negated John's bombardment fleet from doing anything and then the commando group engaged one of Chris's secondary fleets. The result was significant damage on one of the commando ships and Chris's heavy cruiser being captured (not a good day). Chris's second smaller fleet decided not to press its luck against the commando ships and called off its attack.

Then the two big fleets engaged. Many ships were damaged and destroyed, but in the end, both the B10 Battleship and the CVA dreadnought were destroyed.

As usual, the results of the campaign can be seen on my website:
homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/sfb/

There were some overlapping and duplicate survey results in the first few turns. Since it is easy and simple to fix these problems in the early game, we'll fix the hexes (but obviously the results stay the same). Last time, we resolved to avoid these kinds of problems by having John keep track of hexes and me confirm them on a map and we didn't last time. Bad on our part (mostly my part), we will try to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Map Changes:
Jason:
* Turn 2 - 3208 - cannot be reached, changed to 3308
* Turn 3 - 3207 - cannot be reached, changed to 3307
* Turn 4 - 3407 - done on turn 0, changed to 3404

Chris:
* Turn 3 - 3929 - done on turn 2, changed to 3729
* Turn 3 - 3623 - done on turn 0, changed to 3622

[cheethorne]

Recap for Turns 5-9:
* Players continued to expand with some players expanding more aggressively than others.
* Kirk's Romulans are expanding in a wave closer and closer towards John's Klingon territory
* John's Klingons are exploring quickly to the center of the map.
* Jason's Tholians are hopping hexes exploring in the direction of Kevin's Federation.
* The potential for combat presented itself when John and Chris both sent fleets (a large one from John and a small one from Chris towards each other), but no combat occurred.
* Chris found a wormhole that took him no where, but Kevin found a wormhole that took him just south of Tholian territory.

As usual, the results of the campaign can be seen on my website:
homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/sfb/

Also, there were some updates to v7 of the rules (as there always is). These changes reflect things discussed in the first two sessions of the campaign:

* Modified 5.2 - Survey PFs no longer provide a modifier to exploring hexes and Legendary Science Officers no longer modify the result on Chart 1 - Space Terrain Type.
* Modified Chart 5.1 - Space Terrain is now rolled on a d20 to speed up hex exploration.
* Modified Chart 5.2 - The most common roll results now cause no additional rolls to be made on Chart 3 - Space Feature Type.
* Modified Chart 5.5 - Combined the Planetary Composition Chart and the Planet Type chart into a single chart and added the result for whether a planet is inhabited or not to this chart as well.
* Modified 6.3.7 - Changed penalty for a large evading group to be based on a set number of ships, not relative to the size of the pursuing force.
* Modified 6.8.2 - Added reminder that all bases with special sensors are considered to be scouts.
* Modified 6.8.3 - Each group of six ground bases with four or less special sensors does not have to be considered a scout.
* Modified 10.2 - Lowered minor victory for first Player to claim 15 planets to 2 VP instead of 5 VP.

The biggest change to the above rule concerns the exploration charts. The charts were changed so that rolling can be done faster. Instead of rolling at least three sets of 3d6 for every hex being explored (except when you get a delay, then you can stop after two), the space terrain chart is now based on a d20, which is faster to read (and can be rolled at the same time as the 3d6).

Also, the planet system composition chart has been combined with both the planet type roll and the inhabitation roll. It is now all done with a single percentile roll instead of three separate 3D6 rolls.

In both the case of the space terrain and the planet rolls, the percentages of finding something has stayed roughly the same and places where the odds did change, they didn't change by much. For example, the odds of finding an Ion Storm in a hex are radically higher than before (up from ~1% to 5%), but the odds of finding open space has stayed roughly the same.

This should speed up one of the slowest parts of the night, which is the exploration rolls.

Another important change is for groups trying to evade an enemy force. Before, the only time to avoid giving the non-evading group a bonus was to have exactly the same number of ships as that group, so if he had 8 ships and you had 8 ships, he got no bonus, but he had 1 ship and you had 1 ship, he also got no bonus. Now, the size of the evading group matters in two ways: if it is larger than three ships and if it is smaller than the chasing fleet. It makes more sense this way.

[cheethorne]

Recap for Turns 9-14:
* The Romulans (Kirk) and the Klingons (John) finished their expansion towards each other and began a series of brutal battles.
* The Tholians (Jason) went through the wormhole that connects his empire with the Federation (mine) with a medium-sized fleet while at the same time continuing their expansion westward towards the Federation's eastern border. The Tholian fleet was met by heavy defenses and destroyed.
* The ISC (Chris) continued their expansion and discovered two wormholes in the process. One wormhole went no where special and the other went to the heart of the Klingon empire.

As usual, the results of the campaign can be seen on my website:
homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/sfb/

Also, there were a few small updates to v7 of the rules:
* Modified 6.3.6 - Drone Bomardment ships in a Support group must follow the standard rules for the number of such ships in a group.
* Added 6.3.10 and 6.4.1.10 - Added the the Bliztkrieg Mission to allow a sortie group to join a fleet of ships if that fleet has an empty command slot and available space in its fighter limit.
* Modified 6.8.9 - All heavy fighter carriers with special sensors, except Scout Carriers, can count as PF Tenders.

The first rule change removed a special exception given to drone bombardment groups, but that rule prevented those same groups from operating in any other mission other than Support. This proved a hindrance in planning and was not much help anyway. The rule was removed.

The second rule allows Sortie Groups to join a fleet of ships, but only under specific circumstances. This rule becomes active on Turn 18.

The third rule expanded a special exception given to the Federation to include all players and all heavy fighter carriers (except Scout Carriers for all races). This rule does not allow you to ignore the escort ship requirements of such a carrier.